Thursday, January 23, 2014
Demolition of Jewish Hospital and Nursing School Progresses
Demolition crews have made progress with the demolitions of Jewish Hospital and the adjacent School of Nursing along Kingshighway in preparation for a large two-tower complex that will replace the older buildings on the north end of BJC's central campus.
Demolition of the Moses Shoenberg Memorial School of Nursing is almost complete, temporarily exposing the full side elevation of the massive Children's Hospital building.
Windows are being removed from Jewish Hospital in preparation for demolition
Looking down Parkview Place along the south elevation of the 1926 hospital. The ultra modern Steinberg Building addition opened in 1967 will also be demolished.
A closeup of the southwest corner of Jewish Hospital. Since the announcement last year of the demolitions and replacement complex, other than some simple massing diagrams, little detail has been revealed about what the new structures will look like. BJC has set up live webcams so you can follow the progress of demolition and construction to follow.
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5 comments:
It will be such a shame if/when stucco replaces brick/limestone.
^ no stucco. just massive, boring (at best, ugly at worst) slabs of concrete (oh, oh i hope it's some shade of brown!) and glass strewn with giant HVAC vents.
You know, this wouldn't be so bad if A: The City didn't allow the vacating of the street (can't remember the name) and B: The replacement design was something truly outstanding and modern. As it is now, it's likely that we'll have the same 'branding' look of most of the newer buildings in the BJC complex: a sickly yellow, concrete clad grouping of utterly boring and pedestrian designs. (Am I the only one who thinks these buildings have 'jaundice'?)
^No you are not the only one. The newer buildings along Kingshighway south of Children's are plain and unexciting at the upper portions and abominable at street level with mass expanses of blank precast concrete. The Center for Advanced Medicine at Forest Park & Euclid isn't bad, but the materials and design at street level and the covered entrance area leave much to be desired. While I'm a preservationist, I understand that cities change and grow. I mourn the buildings being demolished now mostly for the anticipation that what replaces them will likely fall well short of the opportunity to create an attractive anchor at the north end of the BJC campus.
I have a friend who worked in this end of BJC and these older buildings simply will not support modern medical equipment. The nurses cannot move patient beds through the halls, etc. There is no way to widen doors and hallways to get traffic rapidly flowing. It is too bad that BJC cannot find some WU architects to design better looking buildings, though.
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